


better be yes

by ennaih (aquandrian)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Australian snark, F/M, Recreational Drug Use, another Mendo AU yep, everything and the kitchen table too, first person POV, let's say a real life AU, lots of emotional nastiness, polka dot underwear, that turns into rapturous romanticism, this is close to xReader as I get
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-16 23:43:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11263482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aquandrian/pseuds/ennaih
Summary: A late night call develops so much further.





	better be yes

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this gif by [kvintessenciya](http://kvintessenciya.tumblr.com/post/157615469820):
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>  And [this pic:](http://ben-mendelsohn.tumblr.com/post/159320936251/via)
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> Title from _Do I Move You?_ by Nina Simone.

_do i move you? // are you loose now? // the answer better be yes_

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He calls me at some ungodly hour of night. FaceTime. All sleepy-eyed and rumpled silvered hair in dim blue light. His mouth curves in that wide sweet way when he sees me. “Hey,” he drawls with his open tender mouth and it drags out like thick honey, so slow I know at once.

“Are you fucked up?”

I should be outraged. I am outraged. He’s destroyed this before it’s even begun. It was supposed to be classy and intelligent and fun, it was supposed to be a relationship begun in clear glossy light, developed through laughter and conversation over good food in interesting cafes and restaurants. It was supposed to be wholesome, damnit.

“I wanted to see you,” he says, all soft blue eyes and beatific craggy face.

“You’re high.”

He shrugs with that same sweetness, distracting me with bare pale throat and the hint of chest. I look at him and know -- silently, softly, slyly -- just how I can twist this situation the way I want. 

“I wish you were here,” he murmurs. It may not even be to me, I know that as I shoulder up in bed, the covers sliding off me in the phone-lit dark.

“I can be. Tell me where.”

On the way over in the Uber, I look out the window at the shadow trees and darkened houses, and think about all the girls he’s been fucking.

When he was married, he was safe. He was ours. Tucked away in the security of that marriage, he belonged to us in the fandom, completely removed and completely ours to fantasise. But now that he’s out in the world, released like from some goddamned cloister, he’s not mine anymore. And I resent him for it, that he’s turned me into this unrecognisable creature who fumes wild speculation at every Instagram pic of him with any random young female. I think about all these girls, tall skinny model types, cliches of the Hollywood-New York set, and how my rampant seething jealousy of them says more about my insecurities than him because really I know nothing about him or his fucked up ideas of sex and loneliness. Girls instead of what? Real women like me who can see his flaws and the damage of him and fight how fucken attractive they make him? Like that makes me any better than them.

We only met for the first time earlier tonight. At this arty do where he walked through the crowd, all sleek in this wide lapelled black tux and snowy white shirt with buttoned collar and no ornament, his hair swept back from his temples in defined curls like some gleaming silver(fox) lion. His eyes were so dark blue and still they sparkled when the light hit them, his mouth thin and pretty and vulnerable. He was so beautiful he made my heart hurt.

We were two Aussies surrounded by Americans who thought their Aussie jokes were funny. He had exchanged a look of such subtlety with me, of perfect wry understanding, that I had to look down into my drink to hide my smile. He had been in full charm mode, performing all his modesty and sweetness, throwing in enough ‘mate’s and bashful smiles to thoroughly beguile everyone. I felt almost like a snake in a garden, the only one watching him with the thought behind my eyes of what is he concealing, is this exhausting for him, does he switch this on the moment he steps out of the car and does he collapse the moment he retreats back into the car? But then he flicked that clever cheeky smile at me and I was charmed for a few moments like everyone else.

That was then. Several hours of glittering talk and so many moving agendas that dizzied my head and made me slightly hate everyone in the room. But I laughed and flattered right back and pretended my own version of modesty. Wearing glamour like a cloud of perfume, my hair artfully riotous, knowing that my smile and perfect brows made me look dangerously clever. And I felt it too. Like I was moving through this crowd in a sort of camouflage of black dress with fluffy petticoats and high heels, performing femininity with a hint of cleavage and tattoos on display. He had noticed both tats, something speculative in his eyes as he watched me talk. And I had lifted my chin at him, arch and sarcastic before I could modify myself. Oh, it was on.

We talked books a little, he said his favourite novels were by Koestler and Faulkner. I rolled my eyes and said how very much I was not surprised that it was dead white males, which shocked him into laughter like people usually are. And then I told him how my favourite role of his was a film he did about sixteen years ago. He had inclined his head, his smile so deep his face was all tapered beautiful contours, his eyes so dark blue and delighted as he told me how he totally intends to make more movies with that director because they understand each other’s sensibilities so well. Numbers exchanged because, like he said, the Gumleaf Mafia takes care of its own. I loved that phrase so much I forgot all my cynicism and laughed openly, joyfully at him. When I tried so hard not to comment on his hot red iPhone case but failed, he laughed at me, a hint of tongue between his teeth. 

That was then. Everything intelligent and glamorous, the start of a sane healthy happy relationship.

Then he called me at two in the morning, clearly fucked up on something. And all my rage came snarling forward.

Now I let myself into the darkened house, a little concerned that the front door is unlocked. There’s music throbbing through the shadows, golden light spilling from a room around a corner. I’m trying to work out what the song is as my eyes adjust to the dimness and I lock the front door. It’s vaguely familiar, sort of psychedelic shoegaze with a woman singing slow and seductive. I should know it, probably will remember it in a little while.

His home away from home is all unfamiliar shapes in the dark, and I’m trying so hard not to wonder about the history that may or may not have happened here. I hate myself for being here, for giving into my fervent curiosity. So I try not to look at anything and I try not to think about other women as I make my way towards gold.

He’s sprawled back on a wide white bed, barefoot in tuxedo trousers and a grey tank, one broad hand splayed over his heart as he smiles sleepily up at the ceiling dappled with shadow and lamplight. All the glamour from hours before has melted and undone to this seductive rumpled man who notices me and smiles like this is naturally where I should be. “Hello.”

“Hello,” I reply and something releases inside me. I can hear it in my voice, the softness that swamps me at the sight of him. He’s so strung out he tries to reach his hand to me and it barely lifts. I take it in mine, linking my fingers with his, anxiety in my chest at how huge his pupils are, how blurred out he is. “Come here,” he mumbles even though I’m sitting on the side of the bed, his thigh pressed against mine. 

“I’m here,” I tell him softly. “What did you take?”

There’s powder on the bedside table, flecks of pink grey, an uncurling twist of paper in the gold spill from the lamp. His heavy lids lift enough to see me looking, his fingers stroking the back of my hand, thick like his slow slurring voice. “Want some?”

It kicks in my gut, that howling urge I know is self-destruction, the urge I know he’s no stranger to. One day I’m going to let the leash drop, and let myself do and say and be everything I know is wrong and insane and unhealthy and fatal. One day I will just let myself go.

Today is not that day.

“No, that’s fine,” I say and kiss him softly, without thinking. “Don’t die on me, okay?” 

I could wake up tomorrow with him dead in a pool of dried vomit beside me. This protective feeling rushes through me as I look at him, and I know, I know this is not what I want. I don’t want to be one more in a long line of women who have worried about him and taken care of him and mothered him because he’s so terribly vulnerable and attractive for it. But here I am and here he is, helpless and beautiful, blissed out, all messy silver hair and tender creased face. So touchable, and so I do, unable to resist. 

The song changes, it’s that unbearable Chris Isaak ache. And I stroke his face as he dreams away from me. The video floats through my mind, Helena Christensen so beautiful in black and white, and that takes me to the thought of Michael Hutchence dying in that hotel room. The pain catches like a knife in my chest with the twist of the melody, remembering that this man knew Hutch too, remembering how we all grieved. “Don’t die,” I whisper against his mouth, my fingers slipping down the smooth warmth of his throat, and he turns his mouth against mine, seeking heat. The possibility slides over me, the hours of drugged out sensation ahead, dreaming away together, secret hedonism. 

He moans a little, turning his face against mine like he’s wanting contact. 

“This?” I murmur, shaping my hand to the contour of his freckled cheekbone, dragging a little so my palm drags the skin of his face, barely a whisper between us in the soft hot gold closeness. Blue glimmers through his lashes, his breath on my mouth, as he plucks his fingers against the thin dark blue material of my pajama trousers. 

“Come here,” he groans, his body twists against the sheets, trying to get closer to mine. Raspy voice, this man of edges I’m cutting myself on. I know this, I know it even as I straighten up and move back a little. He sees, a rough sensual sigh through his uneven lips reddening now. “You,” he mumbles and I tense a little. He better not --

“God, your hair,” he moans and reaches his hand out. Relief goes through me, yes he remembers me. My hair is wild and curling, falling across my brow as I lean down and smile at him, remembering the way he had looked at it earlier in the evening. His eyes are blue grey this close, so prettily shaped and so dreamy. Fingertips on my chin, creeping along my jawline as I tilt my face to give him access. He buries his fingers into the soft warm mess of my hair and I see how the sensation rushes through him, tearing that soft groan from his throat, heat like colour under the skin of his throat and cheekbones. So much pleasure that I want too, that aches hungry in me. “Fuuuu --” he says brokenly, bringing his other hand up. I pull my head back enough that I can see this, remember this sight of his pale strong hand crossed in ropes of long black curls.

“You, god,” he moans, rubbing his face against my throat. 

“What?” I coax, curious about this effect I apparently have on him and how I’m going to hold the knowledge secret and selfish forever. His big hands buried in my hair, he buries his face against the side of my neck. “You smell amazing,” he manages thickly. “God … that …”

The three scents I had layered on my skin, masculine and feminine and a little sharp, entirely intoxicating. So very pleased, I arch my chin out of his way and know just how we look. Like some glamour photo in a perfume ad, a woman sleek and smiling faintly at being worshipped by some consumed man. And I am smiling, lazily pleased and so weirdly sure in my adult womanhood as he breathes in the complex scent faded a little from the hours before, the scent of me he remembered. That Tim Buckley line floats through my head … _because you are a woman, and each man has been too young._ Not this one, this man with his thick silvered hair and his achingly familiar face I’ve loved for a few decades, his tender sluttish mouth lifting to mine. He’s gone so far, he’s barely here, and right now I don’t mind. I’ll take what I can get, and damn the morality of what I do.

Gold and flesh in my head, I move back, breaking his hold. He falls back with a little moan on the soft bed, his hands scraping across the ribbed tank, pushing it up so he can touch his own skin. When I pull off my tee, shoulders bared in the pale grey singlet, he smiles that slow wide curve. Slurs, “I like your tits.”

“Good,” I say softly, toeing off my shoes where he can’t see. I hadn’t stopped to put a bra, coming straight from bed with a coat thrown over, so he’s seeing my breasts heavy and soft, nipples poking against thin grey. “I would hope so.”

“Fucken come here,” he mutters and reaches for me. 

The song has slid into something dreamy and hypnotic, a melody that slows us both as he curves his hand to the curve of my breast, and his lips catch mine. So much to learn, so much of him to hold and touch and mouth. I join him in that bed getting hotter and hotter, gasping a little as the music swirls heavy in the air and we touch more and more. Run my nails along the pale skin of his abdomen as the ribbed tank rides up between us. He licks my tattoos, lingering like he could taste the colours, breathing in the scent of our bodies hot together in the rumpled bed. His hair slips silver against my skin, the wet of his tongue a soft tracing flicker of flame. Never silent in this, he responds with sighs and moans to every caress, every discovery, every sense so heightened I feel it too. He pulls down one side of the singlet neckline to bare my right breast, and I draw in a sharp breath at the sight of his face so close to my naked flesh. Lashes, blue, freckles, and his red uneven mouth closing over my sharp nipple. My cunt clenches hot, lust roaring through me now, woken fierce and wanting. 

But he’s too fucked up to fuck me the way I want. It’s unbearable pleasure the way we touch and stroke and kiss, the way we drown in each other. The clothes come off, the touches get bolder, the kisses deeper. He has moments of almost lucidity, blue grey watching me as he sucks on my nipples and has me moaning and clutching at his shoulders, my skin hot all over with so much sensation, wanting to wrap my legs around his hips, wanting to pull him into me. 

And then he drifts away into his own head, away on that chemical rush, leaving me free to do what I want with him, go where I want on his warm vulnerable body. I learn him with my sight and my fingertips and my tongue, preying on his skin and freckles and tiny pink nipples. His hair is soft and still brown under his arms, trimmed close in this strangely alluring shape vivid against the exquisite creamy paleness of his skin. I know it’s creepy and obsessive, I don’t care, and bury my nose in that soft long shape, breathing in the male slightly wrong scent of him. He shivers under my tongue, his fingertips skating over my skin, finding the soft curve of my waist, so gone on this high I’m chasing. 

He comes back enough to react when I use my teeth to pull on his nipples, small groans of encouragement and his fingers sifting through my hair. I bite at them until they’re sore and red, and then I lick up the centre of his chest, glistening his pale skin, rising over him like I could occupy his whole world. “You’re so beautiful,” I tell him and he moans a little when he sucks on my fingers, the points of his lashes so pretty against the skin of his cheekbones. I know it’s wrong -- some part of my pleasure hazed mind knows this -- to take advantage of him in this state. But also I don’t care, I tell myself I don’t. 

He destroyed this first.

And it’s unbearable agony when he’s got me coming. When his body is pressed up against my side and he’s watching me with intense blue grey, his arm across my chest and thigh as he works his thick fingers into my cunt and thumbs my clit, works me with tender relentless focus until I’m coming in shameless cries, losing all my sharpness and intellect in so much softness and pleasure. His hair swerves silver and brown across one cheekbone, rubs soft and decadent against the inside of my thighs as he spreads my legs and spreads my cunt open for his mouth. I’m way too loud, I know this and don’t care about that either, gasps and breathy moans and those telltale distress cries of a woman so close to coming so close. My sounds ride the music filling the house of dark and gold. And his face gleams that smile when he looks up from between my thighs, glittering blue grey eyes and his red parted mouth glistening with my come. Delighted with himself.

We waste the dark hours of the night in flesh and breath and scent and taste, until I think the chemicals in his system have sweated into my skin, until I feel as blissed out as he is. Only it’s my come slicking our skin, fragrant with heat. He’s been hard and then not hard and hard again. When he slumps back under the stroke of my hand up the fair skin of his side, he mumbles, “Suck -- suck …”

“Suck your cock?” I ask delicately, undoing the tuxedo trousers to reveal silvered hair and so much more pale skin.

He calls me baby girl when I go down on him. It makes me contemplate biting his cock so hard I draw blood. I know I should hate him calling me that, I do hate it -- violently -- and I also know I’m going to let him get away with it and never tell anyone I allowed it. Because he has always been the exception to every one of my rules. And anyway, I can hurt him later for it.

He doesn’t come in my mouth. The drugs wilt his cock, agony for him as much as me. And we twine our bodies around each other, kissing each other nameless, bereft of identity in this long decadent night. His mouth has been on every part of me, mine on his. And it doesn’t mean a thing, does it? Because he won’t remember in the morning and I won’t speak of it.

___________

 

The sound of a text wakes me to bright streaming sunshine. It’s not my phone, it’s his. I check that he’s breathing, his face a little flushed with sleep warmth, all feathery silver brown hair and sweetly slack mouth, before I turn to his phone, stretching naked across his chest, very much aware that I’m wanting him again. Gah, it’s his agent. I have absolutely no intention of being found here, good grief. 

As it is, I’m hurrying away from his house when her car pulls up. My face burning a little because there’s sexual freedom and there’s classiness, isn’t there? Classy is not being fucken caught in his house by his agent when I’ve only just met her the night before at a gala thing. I’m not entirely sure how classy it is to flag down an Uber, dressed in nothing but pajamas and a coat with my hair all over the damned place. But by the time I get home and am in the shower, I feel much more myself. Delighted and pleasantly appalled at my memory. Right now the night feels like such a perfect secret, that no one knows what we did but him and me. Until I tell a few friends and even then I might wait a while, hugging the secret to me.

He doesn’t text me until late that evening. It’s a bit torturous, pretending not to check my phone, pretending I don’t care, that I’m cool enough, sophisticated enough to carry on my own life with friends and work and family on social media, to not feel the minutes of silence ticking past, feel my self-respect erode with every second I don’t hear from him and know I desperately want to. Ugh. I’ve been immune from that nonsense for so long. Now here I go again, watching myself steadily lose my mind in the fervour of romantic longing.

Then my phone goes and his name appears on the lock screen, lurching my heart so badly in my chest I feel sick. << You left pretty early. >>

At least I know exactly what to say back. << Beating a discreet exit. How do you feel? >>

<< Fucken wrecked, unsurprisingly. Are you busy tonight? >>

<< Writing tonight, yep. I have a deadline. What did you have in mind? >>

<< I thought I’d cook you dinner. Nothing fancy. When’s good for you? >>

My curiosity overwhelms every warning scream. So two nights later, I’m opening my front door to him standing there, laden with stuff, his smile utterly adorable and his hair a shorter fuzzy mess. Approximately twenty minutes after that, I’m face down across the kitchen table, gasping and holding onto the edges, and his cock is hammering deep into my cunt, fucking me like he has something to prove. Which, we agreed later, he pretty much did. It’s savage and glorious, too fast but necessary, and I love that I’m going to feel where he’s been inside me for the rest of the evening.

Sober, he’s a little awkward and uncertain, watching me carefully as he cooks and tries not to charm me too much. It’s not a performance this time, I can feel his anxiety reflecting mine. But there’s very little shame in the wake of such sexual explosiveness -- okay, a little that we laugh off and try to be goddamned adults about this. 

He makes pasta with just the right amount of olive oil and spinach and pine nuts, and we joke about the American-Aussie confusion about shrimp. “Call that a prawn? This is a fucken prawn!” Which sends us into uproarious laughter. We eat on the couch, backs against each opposite end, and talk about home. How much we miss it, how this place doesn’t feel real. When he washes up and I’m putting leftovers in the fridge, I look across at him and feel like we are the only two too real people in this unreal land, so far from his home city and mine, our shared country.

There’s a box of pralines I’ve been saving for comfort food, and we’re eating those on the couch as I tell him about the book I’m working on. He’s cut his hair since that night, and now it’s short and silver, absurdly curly and flopping forward on his forehead. I want to touch it as he pokes through the chocolates, looking for the strawberry fondant as he complains, his voice rich with indignation, about the coffee he’s had to endure over the past seven years. My heart hurts so differently now when I look at him, knowing it’s too late, knowing I never had a chance to protect myself from him. 

He gives me the strawberry fondant to eat and tells me about the latest script he’s read, how he’d like to do it because of the people involved. There’s a heavy silver ring on his little finger that warms against my skin when he takes my hand in his. And I watch him talk, all bright eyes and animated expression. I don’t tell him how much I want him to come home, not wanting it too because it would be the worst possible thing for his career right now, because he’s waited so long for this, we all have.

He stays the night in my bed under the red neon cursive sign that says Create. It starts to rain down the dark windows as we lose ourselves in pleasure, fucking all the worry and alienation and dissatisfaction away. This time he’s so present and intense I find it almost painful to look at him and have him look right back at me, so close so vividly unmistakably him. I bury my face against the smooth curve of his shoulder, deeply upset and wanting every moment of this too. But then he moves in me, then the sex takes us over and it’s wild and neon bright and consigned to the unreality of this place. And when I eventually fall asleep, it’s with the sense of him dreaming beside me.

Next morning he wakes far too early for my liking but if it means having him fuck me slow and thorough in the sleep warm sheets, that’s fine. As I doze back off, he gets out, presumably to find coffee or whatever. I don’t mind, happily sore and loving that my bed smells of him now.

I wake to the unmistakable aroma of bacon frying. “Are you fucken kidding me?” I ask, shambling out to the kitchen, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. 

“What?” he retorts, all sparkling eyes and cheeky grin, upraised spatula in one hand. “We need our fucken strength, don’t we? How d’you like your eggs?” he demands, turning back to the stove.

“Yolk hard,” I mumble into his back, putting my arms around his waist. How am I supposed to resist someone who cooks for me? He pats my hand and tells me to set the table.

As we have breakfast at the kitchen counter, the sun bright on the balcony doors, I remember something I’ve wanted to ask him. It’ll destroy the mood, I know, but the urge spikes self-destructive in me. “Hey,” I say casually, reaching for my glass of juice. “That wasn’t coke you did that night, was it?”

He doesn’t react, buttering his toast without looking up. “Nah. That was heroin.”

“In powder form? I thought --”

“Yep,” he says shortly. 

That tone pleases me in some fiendish way. “So why did you? What brought that on?”

Now I get his trademark terrifying stare. Part of me admires the sheer beauty of his face, of that look, how his eyes gleam an icy blue, the uncompromising line of his mouth, the swoop of his brows. And most of me is really impressed at how not terrified I am. 

“You’re not going to tell me, are you?” I say pleasantly. We’re not at that stage yet, I’ve pushed too fast too soon.

Now something sparks sharp and intelligent in his eyes. Suddenly it feels like he’s seen right through me. Before he can say anything, I spin around, wondering loudly where my phone is. He lets me rush off in search of it, and I know, I just know that he’s watching me with a certain thoughtfulness. 

I’m going home next week and won’t be back for a few months. When I close the door after him that morning, it’s with an awful relief and dread. I know he could fuck any number of girls while I’m away, and I know that possibility will burn like acid in my throat. It makes me desperately sad how much I feel for him when I shouldn’t at all, when it does me no good at all. But he’s sweet and clever and funny and tender and so very attractive. He’s everything I wanted and I want to ask him why he wants me but I’m afraid of the answer. 

So I don’t and he’s back that night with his fierce vulnerable desire. The sex is deep and raw and I love the way his hands are so big and confident on me, how he has me face up against the wall by the door, his breath hot and anxious in my hair. We’re still very much in the vanilla stage but I know that all it will take is one word from me, one indication and we could veer off into kink territory so fast. 

He wants me to meet the rest of the Aussie expats but I deflect that every time until he stops asking. He knows why, it shows in his kind sad smile when I say no. “Let this just be us for now,” I plead, and he kisses the lie quiet. I don’t even know who I’m lying to anymore. Because this is happening despite all my protestations, this is happening and I love every moment of it.

One time when we’re at his place, a cat comes padding out of somewhere. “Of course you have a cat,” I declare. “Of course you have a cat!”

He scowls at me, toeing the door closed as I take some of the food delivery cartons from him. “Cats are very nice people!” he protests. “Aren’t they?” He directs this at the cat, a big grey thing with suspicious eyes. “Aren’t you? You are so!”

“Cats are evil and you’ll never persuade me otherwise. Oh my god, it wants to make friends with me.” 

He has far too much fun with this at my expense. The only way we reach compromise is I agree to be nice to the cat if he lets me teach him how to use Twitter and follow more people than just his brother. “Really?” he asks with such magnificent scepticism, his voice so deep and delicious I throw a cushion to make him laugh.

He tells me about his kids and shows me pictures, very careful to never mention a meeting. For my part, I cautiously engage in talking about them but I keep to my role as the not so young thing he’s fucking at this moment in time. His house in the daylight is full of so many personal details I almost feel embarrassed to look at, aware of how much I want to know. But we talk books and movies so much I start to forget my discomfort. 

I knew he’d be interesting -- what I don’t expect is how much I want to discuss everything with him. How easy it is to argue and laugh and listen to each other, trade knowledge and viewpoints, to challenge him as he challenges me. How his clever mind works so when I ask him something, he answers from a point three steps ahead in the discussion. I’m not intimidated by this, something that faintly surprises me. Ten years ago, I’d be cowed by his intellect, horribly self-conscious and choking on all the things I could say. Now as he cooks and gives me a rambling opinion on James Joyce, I with my English degree twice over regard him with affectionate interest and tell him I still haven’t made it through Ulysses but this is exactly what I think of modernist literature. Our argument about the value of a university education rages for half an hour over lunch while the cat watches with disdain from the top of the couch. This may or may not have ended in a lot of kissing which I know suited us both quite fine.

In addition to all the other random knowledge, he’s such a history nerd I cannot resist provoking him in that respect. He smokes and listens intently while I talk about master narratives and Jameson and Althusser, half-bullshitting it like any good arts student. When I finish, enormously pleased at having exposed history as an arbitrary concept, he smiles that perfect cherubic curve of a smile and says he totally agrees. I may have hit him extra hard with the cushion then.

Over the space of that one week, I learn the taste of nicotine kisses, sometimes nestled against his chest as we watch a Harold Lloyd movie and he smokes. Every time I leave him, my hair smells of it. And okay, I don’t love that aspect but I get weirdly used to it. He leaves one of his many graphic tees at my place, tries to use my razor and fails. The spare toothbrush I got out the first time he stayed over becomes his toothbrush. The tee is joined by polka dot underwear that I shake my head at before shutting the drawer. 

What I do say to him a little later is “You could try my polka dot undies, you know. They’re all smooth and satiny, and I reckon you’d like the lace trim.”

He looks at me from under his brows, mouth curling, his voice very low. “Show me.”

That isn’t actually what I was going for but I play the coquette just for fun. Undoing my jeans and looking at him over my shoulder as I reveal my admittedly quite nice arse in the black knickers, dotted all over with tiny white. He peels them off me with his teeth, eats me out, and fucks me so thoroughly it takes a few days before I realise that particular pair have gone missing.

When I do realise, I text him immediately. << Show me. >>

The photo is all kinds of mouthwatering, and when he arrives about an hour later, I meet him at the door with “See, I told you about the lace” and get attacked with his mouth before I can say anything more. I have barely enough time to see that the lace trim is shockingly black against the fair skin of his thighs, the sleek material all taut and spilling his hard red cock upwards. He pushes them down low enough, his hands shaking a little, and flips me over onto my knees on the floor, driving his cock into my clenching wetness. He’s so unsteadily excited, babbling complaints and very profane arousal, that I feel quite proud of myself for suggesting it in the first place.

He swears so much he makes me worse. And I never know whether to be irked or charmed by the fact that he says things twice, his mind examining his thoughts with such concentration that his tongue buys him time by repeating things. But it’s the particularly Australian turns of phrase that delight me so much, that make me feel a little bit safer away from home. I like to think I do the same for him, every time I unthinkingly say, “She’ll be right” and his eyes sparkle that little bit devilish. He adds new playlists to my Spotify, rearranges my kitchen cupboards, and my iPhone charger constantly goes walkabout. All of which drive me nuts because I have my routine and assigned places for everything but he brings affable chaos to my borrowed home.

So I invade his space a little, take my laptop over to work on when he has to leave the house. On the couch with the music going and the cat draped over my foot, scrolling through social media feeds while the scene I’m writing sorts itself out in my head, and I hear him enter the room. He comes up behind the couch, hands settling on my shoulders. “Hello,” he says with that lovely resonant tone that makes me smile as I tip my head back. He kisses my hair, kisses my forehead, licks with interest at my lips.

“Hello,” I reply, hearing the warmth in my voice. “How did your fancy lunch go?”

He makes one of his long murmury contemplative sounds, this whole other language he speaks without actual words, one hand sliding down below the neckline of my loose grey top. “Ohhhh, it was pretty interesting … Yeah, it was pretty interesting.”

“Yeah? Another villain, pervert, junkie, paedophile, dysfunctional white guy?”

His pretty eyes glint warning, a slight edge to his voice. “Now, wouldn’t that be fun?” His big warm hand covers the flesh of my bare breast within the top, so possessive and outrageous that I’m sighing and arching towards his mouth without thinking. “Yeah?” he challenges, sly and sure in his power over me as his fingers curve over my soft nipple. 

“Fuck you,” I manage, and pull his delighted mouth to mine.

He’s so tactile along with the fidgetiness and the elliptical talk. And weirdly it’s not as disruptive as I would have expected, a sort of thoughtful energy to him. He touches me as much as he fidgets and talks. Hooks his hand over my thigh when we’re eating together. Loops curls of my hair around his fingers when we’re watching something, stroking his hand down my back when he passes me, forever petting and touching like he needs the stimulation without being conscious of it. 

It takes me a few days to get comfortable enough to do the same, to claim the casual right to his body the way he does with me. But then once I start, it’s addictive. To be able to run my fingers through the thickness of his silvered hair when he’s hunched over some cooking thing. Trace the slope of his cheekbones when he’s telling me earnestly why some hiphop album is the greatest music ever made. And let my fingers roam into his pubic hair just to madden him while we’re watching some really serious arthouse bullshit flick.

I didn’t think he noticed when I started touching him. But then one afternoon I bounce back onto the couch beside him, mid-rant about this Vulture piece I’ve just read, and he takes my hand and places it on the centre of his chest, eyes bright as he watches me talk. I file that moment along with the rest of this intense week. With the way his body curves around mine when we’re falling asleep. And the way he kisses soft and drowsy in the morning, smiling at me like I’ve slid out of his dreams onto his pillow. 

It’s terrifyingly romantic and I know I’m headed for so much pain when it ends.

We text right up to the moment I board the Qantas flight, silly stuff about airports and aeroplane food and quarantine restrictions back home. In my seat, I cover my eyes with my hands, so close to tears, feeling the separation between us like a stinging cut. I don’t want the experience of coming home to be soured by the absence of him. And more than that, I don’t want to get used to being away from him. It’s awful how fast I’ve gotten addicted to his presence, how comfortable it is to be with him when I thought it would be complicated and maybe unpleasant. But it isn’t at all, it’s frighteningly easy. And there’s still so much to talk about.

______________

 

Sydney greets me with perfect blue skies as we fly in over the harbour, and the gleaming white sails of the Opera House make me want to cry even harder. But I don’t text him the moment I get out of Customs like I promised, I delay it for a good long while. My parents meet me with hugs and loud questions, hurrying me to the car. I don’t text him on the ride back in the clean fresh morning light through the industrial areas and the cosy residential streets. I’m home now, back in my life with my family, and somehow that week with him crystallises in my head, under glass and preserved. Until what? Until I fly back in a few months to a few awkward attempts at lunch dates and we tacitly agree that the lust has spent itself? Until I have to see pix of him with other women and eventually yet another committed relationship with a woman who isn’t me.

My real home feels exactly that the moment I unlock the door and step inside. My parents fuss around me, Mum practically fighting me to unpack while Dad goes around turning on all the appliances and tutting over the ones I hadn’t turned off. It’s only when I manage to banish them with promises of coming over for dinner that the relief of being home roars through me, sinking onto the side of my bed with such blessed rightness. Surrounded by my own colours and all my beloved stuff, I text him just that. 

<< God, it kills me how good it feels to be home. >>

A second after I hit send, I realise how that could come across as snide and pushing him away. I didn’t mean that at all. 

He FaceTimes me within a matter of seconds, his hair cut crisp now, rainy afternoon light behind his familiar troubled expression. “Hey, how was the flight?”

And just like that, all my anxiety evaporates. I complain loudly about the flight, and show him around my proper home. Star Wars pop vinyls, the 1930s red and gilt wingchair with footstool, Florence Broadhurst curtains and bed linen, and the white neon cursive text on the wall that says Receive And Transmit. He demands to see the bookcases again, and roundly criticises my taste in fiction. I accept this with equanimity, knowing he’s getting his own back, and then casually mention how good the coffee is at my local cafe. He gives me such an anguished look I have tears of laughter in my eyes.

We talk about everything and nothing as I lie on my bed, my body aching with jet lag exhaustion. He’s prepping for a film shoot hence the haircut, and I curl on my side, phone propped on the pillow as he roams his house and talks to me and swears at the cat occasionally getting underfoot. And eventually he says, apropos of nothing, “You know how you asked me that time --”

I know but stay quiet, waiting for him.

He halts somewhere, rubbing his hand over his face as he keeps the phone at the right distance. “It wasn’t -- it’s not like I had some great -- there was no big trauma, you know. It just -- which makes it worse, I know -- or not, but it’s like -- this was it. I -- the opportunity presented itself and I was stupid and self-destructive enough to take it. I fell off the wagon. Basically. I fell off the wagon.”

I say nothing, watching his so expressive face with its bold nose and subtle lovely mouth that twists now. His gaze has skittered all over the place as he told me and now it flicks up to the screen, blue grey directly at me. That intense honesty that is so appealing in him. “It won’t happen again.”

“Don’t make me promises you can’t keep,” I say coolly. It’s cruel, I know, and he flinches in response, anger clenching the shapes of his face. 

“I mean it,” he insists and then just as fast switches tack. “Anyway, it’s not you I’m making the promise to. It’s me. I’m making the promise to me.”

“Good,” I say with a soft warm smile, seeing how that disarms him completely.

We talk every night for a week, crossing time and distance by the blue iPhone light. More than once I fall asleep with the phone on my pillow, and wake to a silent text message or some scribbled silliness that carries me through my day with a secret smile. My parents have figured out there’s some sort of relationship happening, and eventually I tell them what he does and where I met him. They don’t know his name, I’m not ready for that yet. My mother will be over the moon, my father will grumble a lot but be very impressed. They’ve always liked him as an actor, nearly as fiercely proud of him as I am. 

I meet with my own agent and go to publisher meetings in preparation for this book that’s coming together nicely. The time with him hasn’t interrupted my momentum, surprisingly. He hasn’t filtered into my writing yet which pleases me, but I can tell that the next book will have him all the way through, his colours and his rhythms and his keen edges. Maybe I’ll write the next book from a male point of view. I do wonder though how it’s going to be when the writing gets really intense and I disappear into the novel, how that’s going to strain things between us. No, the irony of him being similarly obsessed with his work doesn’t escape me.

Life continues with my Sydney friends and family time, movies and plays and dinners and gigs enough to give me recharge breaks from the writing. It’s too hot to get a pie but I FaceTime him from the good bakery cafe up the road with its lovely golden display. The twelve year olds behind the counter watch, bemused, until I explain that the guy on the other end hasn’t been home in seven years. They totally understand. I send him pix from everywhere I go, and he tells me memories from when he lived here. We grieve and celebrate the changing city, I get in a few good jibes about how wonderful Sydney scenery is compared to Melbourne which he manages to nobly ignore until I go too far and insult the coffee. Upon which I get threatened with being actually hauled to Melbourne and made to suffer the extreme heat and the bitter cold for the sake of educating my plebian palate. I tell him he’s a sad bastard.

Of course this isn’t half fuelled by the sexual frustration that burns between us. I send him a pic of my tits at a particularly inopportune moment, and he retaliates with a steady supply of very pornographic photos that I threaten to accidentally put on Tumblr. For the mutual benefit of the fandom, I say. He takes a little too long to forbid me. We have a few intense Skype sessions that make me very glad I live alone. The sight of him feverish and naked by computer light, his eyes so blue and mouth damp red, goes right up there in my memory along the sight of him braced on his arms over me, silver hair stuck to his temples, heat along his cheekbones as he comes into me. He says he misses the smell of me. Not perfume, he corrects, the actual smell of me. I realise he’s talking about my cunt, and blush so hard I keep blushing about it for about three days afterwards every time I remember, horribly mortified and delighted at the same time.

Funny thing about the enforced distance is it makes us talk more intimately about things we didn’t think to mention when we were in the same bed. Like the taste of come, the mechanics of masturbation, what porn we like. And notwithstanding polka dots, we still carefully circle the topic of kink. Maybe when I go back. No, there’s no maybe about it. I promise myself that when I go back, if this is still going, kink will happen. And it’ll probably be glorious. I find it very difficult to believe he wouldn’t.

Two weeks slide into three. His film shoot begins and because it’s London, our call times become more erratic. I see him tired and so cranky, distracted and curt. None of this surprises me -- it’s mildly interesting, if anything, to see my writing self reflected in him and remember to have some compassion for the me in him. When I hit the final stretch of my novel, we talk less and less which hurts a little on some level but I know it’s necessary and anyway, he’s buried deep in his role. The last thirty-eight hours of writing my whole existence narrows to eat and sleep and write, to the point where I don’t actually notice that he hasn’t called. No, I do notice but tell myself he’s shooting and then forget.

I type “ENDS” at about five in the morning and only then look up to see the silver grey curtains starting to glow with dawn. The air has that strange damp chill even in my room with the lamp burning. I cannot bear to reread back beyond the last paragraph. So I tweak a few phrases, put a comma in, and sigh a little at the screen. It’s such a weird blend of gratitude and grief to finish writing a novel. I sit for a bit to feel that moment, to re-inhabit my body with its physical sense of faint exhaustion and the total mental drain. Then another little happier sigh as I hit save and shut down. My phone has a few social media notifications, a couple of messages from friends, nothing from him but that’s okay, I text him my news anyway.

So I go to bed and sleep like the dead. When I wake around noon, I take myself out to celebrate. It’s a gorgeous summer day, the breeze just hot enough and the city not choked with too many tourists. I stroll to my favourite spot and sit for a while, gazing with misty-eyed happiness at it all and aching for him.

He replies eventually. << That’s fucken amazing, congratulations! I’m so proud of you. Where are you? >>

Ridiculously happy, I take a pic of the harbour and send it to him. << Celebrating at my favourite spot, reconnecting with my Sydney soul. >>

<< Nice! Sydney trash, though. >>

<< Oh oh. Melbourne saddo. >>

We bicker like this for a good forty minutes while the gulls swoop overhead through the blue skies and the waters glitter under the bridge. Sun on my face, the white sails of the Opera House at my back. I am so happy and missing him so much it’s like a knot of pain in my chest.

<< Just because you guys have no natural beauty at all, you have to make do with your posey coffee and your fake Euro architecture and your cliquey art scene and your pissy little brown river. I feel so sorry for youse. >> I hit send, and switch from pleased at myself to staring gloomily at the ferry going past, green and yellow thronged with people, churning white in its wake.

“That’s fucken rude and I wouldn’t expect anything less from you ill-mannered fucken Sydney buggers,” he says, sitting down beside me.

I shriek so loud I nearly fall sideways off the bench, alarming him enough to grab at me, and then shriek equally loud and jump on him. “What are you doing here!”

He laughs so bright and beautiful, impossibly present. As he steadies me on the bench, as my hands cover his, he tells me with a certain blue grey intensity, “I wanted to see you.”

It renders me speechless for a few moments, staring at him, knowing all this entailed. The break in schedule, the money, the arrangements, the long horrible flight, the lost time. 

“Well,” I manage, trying not to be so damned emotional. “I think I better take you home and have sex with you.”

He tilts his head, nose scrunching up. “You reckon?”

About two seconds inside the front door, he has me up off my feet, my legs wrapped around his hips, devouring my mouth with all his nicotine bite and sweetness. There’s very little talk, a few gasps as we topple into bed, a little cry of frustration from me at stubborn zippers, and then a deep long sigh as I arch into his cock sinking into the tight wet heat of my body aching no more. Sydney sunshine through white lace curtains glitters the silver in his hair and the tiny beloved lines of his face as he watches my eyes, and moves deeper and deeper into me. A plane roars low over the window, driving our bare bodies together, and that something releases in my chest, melts all the way through my flesh. 

This, here, now, him, this is everything I want. Everything.

When he rolls off and gathers me close, pressing his mouth against my hair, I close my eyes and will myself to ask the thing. For what it’s worth, all the hurt and emotional exposure, the vulnerability of me that I deny while I fetishise the vulnerability of him. Into the smooth skin of his chest, I mumble, “I can’t believe you did this. When, when do you have to be back?”

“Please,” he groans. “I just got off that fucken plane. Don’t make me think about when I have to get back on.” But his voice is rich with humour, such a beautiful sound that I laugh and wriggle upwards to lightly kiss his mouth. His suitcase is just inside my apartment, by the door. And soon his phone will go with messages and calls. Mine too, probably, come to think of it.

But for now, we lie together in the damp heat of afterglow, that certain smell that is just us gilding our skin in the afternoon sunshine. He turns his head to look at me, a faint smile in all the curves and contours of his face, his gaze roaming my features. In a moment, he’s going to start stroking his fingertips through the curls of my hair. I know this and instead reach for his hand, looking down at the difference of us, the skin and shape of mine within his.

“Why do you want me?” I ask, not looking up.

He doesn’t answer for a moment, watching me and thinking. I can feel that mind working, hidden and always unpredictable. For all his emotional honesty and vulnerability onscreen, he has never been an easy read offscreen. And of course I’m afraid all over again.

“Are you sure you’re ready for that answer?” he asks kindly. 

Shaken, I pull my hands away and snap, “I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t.”

But he’s still silent, and when I glance at him, there’s such patience in the way he watches me. Somehow it reminds me that I am an adult woman, not that frightened girlchild anymore.

“Probably not,” I admit with some dignity, feeling stronger with every second. “But tell me anyway?” 

His mouth curls, all tenderness and intelligence. “Tell you what. You come back to London with me. And let’s say … in a year’s time, I’ll tell you.”

It takes me a moment to work this out. With a scowl, I say, “That’s blackmail.”

“Is it?” All wide eyed innocence.

“Fine,” I snarl, scrambling out of bed. “Don’t tell me! Trying to have an adult conversation here but fine!”

He lets me go, some secret in his grin. Out in the living room, I set my Spotify playing. I’m so angry with him, and just as furious with myself. Why did I say anything at all? Why couldn’t I just let things be? Just because he makes this big dramatic gesture, I lose my mind and feel the need to make some big romantic gesture in return. In my own ass backwards way.

The music snakes through my apartment, follows me into the bedroom where he lies on his back, beautiful and pale in my ivory and dark blue bedlinen, and smiles that faint recognition at me. I sit on the side of the bed, still naked, my hand coming to rest on his heart. “Remember this song?”

He blinks, shifting his head on the pillow to hear better. “I know it. Is it --”

“It’s one of the songs that was playing that first night I came over.” I might be going somewhere with this, I’m not entirely sure where yet. But he seems to understand and covers my hand with his.

“What about you?” he asks. “Why do you want me?”

It’s such an absurd question I make a face at him. “Why -- what? Because you’re clever, funny, kind, much less fucked up than I thought, and have a rather nice cock?”

It comes out too flippant, I know that instantly, hearing and hating my voice even as I’m saying it. But at the same time, I mean every word, however impossible it may be to communicate that to him. As it is, he squeezes his eyes shut, laughing with his mouth open and tender.

“No, I mean it,” I insist softly, touching his throat to bring his gaze back to me. “I mean it,” I repeat and say his name. His mirth calming, he sits up and tugs me closer, his hand slipping to the side of my waist, such a weirdly protective gesture.

“Come here,” he murmurs and puts his forehead against mine so I can close my eyes in the blur and warmth of him surrounding me. “So maybe I want you,” his voice gets a bit thick and emotional, “because you tease me mercilessly, and you have terrifyingly high standards for yourself and the people you care about, and you have a good heart that you won’t even admit to yourself because you’re much much more fucked up than I am, and I like every single thing about you.”

Unable to resist, I add, “And I have great tits?”

“And you have great tits.”

“Good,” I say, satisfied, and kiss him long and slow. The joy rises around us, in us. I can feel it, in the warmth glowing up my chest, in the shake of his breath and the curve of his mouth against mine. He pulls us back into bed and I go willingly, soft lushness against the male lines of him. 

“No sleepy,” I mumble between the kisses and petting. “You can’t go to sleep yet, it’s the worst thing for jet lag. Not until the evening.”

“Really?” he says with interest. “Fuck that.” 

As I laugh atop him, he grins up at me. “So are you coming back with me or what?”

I think of that Nina Simone song, and smile. “Probably.”

The answer is totally yes.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeaaaaahhhh ... That was supposed to be one scene of filthy druggie porn because I got inspired by that second pic and couldn't shake the idea. But then story happened. I am not responsible. I just follow my Mendo muse, orright? Orright.
> 
> "Fucken come here" is a direct Nick Cave quote from when I saw him in concert in January this year.
> 
> The psychedelic shoegaze song is _Anemone_ by Brian Jonestown Massacre, vocals by Miranda Lee Richards. 
> 
> And so so so many Mendo fandom injokes and references. So many. Cos why the hell not?


End file.
